Better Times

It’s not so bad
I make it out like it’s
something else but it’s
not so
after all I’m alive
and I’m not likely to ever
live again
and so for now
I can sit here
and write
and sip whiskey
and hear at high bitrate
through well-reviewed and expensive
the sounds I like to hear,
safe from the
cold and
the rain
and the war and famine and disease
and what the fuck am I complaining about?

I’ve made strides
for I believe
this is the first poem I’ve ever written
with a relatively clear head with
thoughts passing through my brain
at a normal pace and
not at the
speed of
and I know this isn’t good
I know everything I’ve already written
already beats the
everliving shit out
of whatever this is
and I know that I’ll
never again write as well
as I did
but if I don’t
I hope I don’t.
I hope I never do
because take one look at
my ruined smile and my
dead eyes and
see what that
cost me.

And I would’ve ended this there, in my draft of this poem
I wrote on May 30 2017
but these are better times. Or they’re
becoming so.
Anyway I have to believe they are now after
after longer than I’d ever gone without, after all if they
aren’t then why did
I do it at all?
or rather why did I
not do it?

these are better times
which I needed
because I
was at the end of my
fucking rope
strangling, dying
hanging from it.